Ancient Lore Wrote:For eons untold, the empire of Patria ruled the world of Perun. Many were their magics, and miraculuos: gleaming airships that could cross the breadth of the world in a single day, genie servants that would carry spoken word between cities in an instant. Rivers were made to run in circles, hills raised to suit the whim of the ancient emperors.
The end came in an instant - the Cataclysm triggered a magical storm that covered the whole world, engulfing cities of the empire, evaporating billions of its citizens. Most living creatures vanished off the face of the earth that day, never to be seen again.
A millenium passed, during which smaller storms flashed across the world, destroying everything in their path. Civilization survived in a few small enclaves, protected by ancient magics.
Now, as the protection wards finally fail, the descendants of survivors of the Cataclysm emerge into the light of unknown...
The text above will be going out to all players once the game starts.
Anyway, I thought I'd do something different first - I've attached the Worldbuilder file, and would ask anyone curious about it to download, play and let me know your feedback. Don't feel that you have to play out the whole game; just the first 50 to 100 turns will do.
There's several random civilizations in the save at the moment; choose any, or hack around in the file to replace one of them with your favorite. Make a mini-adventure of it, if you will!
A few things to note:
At the moment, you only start out with a single settler; I haven't added warriors\scouts yet, and I'll need to add a sentry promotion to each settler to ensure it can see the nearby area (note that I will not be adding mobility to the settler!).
Rivers will look weird at times; I basically gave up on trying to make them look perfect.
Feel free to settle in place - the BFC has several resources, including a couple food ones.
If you could let me know:
- What do you think of the map?
- Do you like the expansion choices?
- Do you feel that the map could use more resources; if so, which ones?
Well... that's one way to deal with agrarianism, lol.
I'd hate playing on this map though. Large parts of it look pretty much uninhabitable due to lack of food. I can't even find a decent 2nd city location. That's not really a good thing. The early game is slow enough as it is. Corn, rice, pigs and cows are noticeably absent. So are gems, reagents and silk. Starting off by pushing everyone towards researching the expensive Hunting tech because deer and fur are 2 out of the 3 resources, I don't like either.
Just in case someone wants to play unspoiled, I'll use spoiler tags:
Maksim Wrote:- What do you think of the map?
"*----*." Takes a long swig from his canteen. "It seems a bit ... dry." I guess one way to neuter early aristograrianism is to remove grassland and floodplains. Should make for some interesting challenges.
Potential problems: water mana seems almost obligatory if you want to settle in the middle of the map. Breeding pits would be golden, but I guess the lack of commerce and gimped aristograrianism will hit the vamps harder than everyone else. Having everyone start by Hunting resources seems to favor the elves (who, on the other hand, will have to do a lot of irrigating to have enough food - I'm used to getting food surplus from cottaged grassland ancient forests). Illians can just freeze everything and have 3-food riverside farms (and no commerce).
I approve of having no lairs, although it does greatly lessen the number of barbs. I played ~55 turns and didn't see a single barb, just animals (except for a goblin and an archer in a fort). I think Wildland animals tend to choke out the barbs. Bad for the Orcs.
The toads and razorweed revealed in worldbuilder were a little jarring.
Maksim Wrote:- Do you like the expansion choices?
Yes, some interesting choices: pick up the sparse bonus food tiles, or grab good resources and starve.
Maksim Wrote:- Do you feel that the map could use more resources; if so, which ones?
No, I like it the way it is. Of course, I'm not playing. I hope you have a thick skin for criticism. I expect this map to play out a lot differently than any of the other games, and I also expect a lot of complaining from the players.
One more strange thing: I played as the Svarts, and started with both irrigation and crafting.
Comments in spoiler tags, to follow DaveV's example. Keep in mind that I didn't actually play this one out, just looked at it in Worldbuilder.
Um. This an... interesting map.
First off, minor thing. In the west, there is an ivory in a jungle. IN THE DESERT. This bugs me to no end, especially since there is no other jungle [or even ivory, I think?] on the map.
Anyway, to the actual map: I'm not really sure how to react to it. I suspect that the players will probably be whining and moaning from about Turn 0 to the very end. Honestly, while having no grassland is an interesting concept, I'm not sure it would be very fun. If you're serious about going through with this map, I would strongly suggest adding a whole lot more food resources. I don't know if this was your intention, but Uberfish mentioned:
Quote:Well... that's one way to deal with agrarianism, lol.
Uh, actually I think that it's just the opposite. This map *forces* you into Agrarianism, because that is the only way to actually get any serious food. Without Agrarianism, you're stuck with 2F/1P/1C farms all the way until Sanitation [and forget about Aristocracy...]; with Agrarianism, you have 3F/0P/1C, which actually gives you the chance to get surplus real food.
Another problem will be commerce. That is, the extreme difficulty of getting it. Aristocracy will bump farms back down to break-even, and cottages will actually run at a food deficit that necessitates the need for Agrarian farms. And just forget about specialists.
So I would strongly suggest sprinkling more food resources liberally over the map [preferably non-Hunting ones], and perhaps it would be wise to add a few more commerce resources like incense and cotton as well.
Oh, and maybe this was on purpose, but I also noticed two minor resource issues. One, there don't appear to be any reagents on this map. Two, Unique Features also seem to be absent; maybe a few super-lairs like the Pyre of the Seraphic and such could be added to the central strip of desert?
Anyway, those are my suggestions; feel free to listen to them or ignore them.
No criticism is meant personally. I hope I didn't leave the wrong impression; it's an interesting map, but I'm just not sure it's right for this type of game.
Played in: PBEM 4 [Formerly Jowy's Peter of Egypt] | PBEM 10 [Napoleon of the Dutch] | PBEM 11 [Shaka of France] | EitB XVI [Valledia of the Amurites] | PB7 [Darius of Rome] | Diplomacy 3 [Austria-Hungary] | PBEMm/o vs AutomatedTeller
Oh boy, this is one evil, eevil map. I'll deal with it post-mortem style :
What went right
1) Sooo many hard choices in the start
2) Aristoagrianism is no longer a cookie-cutter choice.
3) Warmongering traits seem equally useful as Financial
4) OO is not broken
5) Some usual suspects will not be favourites to win
What went wrong
1) Elves have potential to get broken, especially elves running FoL
2) This map is a Hippus dream, all the hammers and open space...
3) Specialist economy is impossible
4) Scorpions! Seriously, with all these plains desert there are hordes of them.
5) Palace Water and Sun mana will be really, really strong here. Cue Varn Gosam and Hannah.
I would just tell the players beforehand what you have in mind. Not exactly what it looks like, but at least that it is food-starved and a rather hard map to play on. If I am not mistaken are the players not those which mostly were rather unhappy with there map in the last game? If so this map has potential for a real conflict.
This map is extreme. I'd peg it around scenerio style extreme. I haven't read the full players thread, but many of the players were talking about a lush world or a world with only a few edits.
I do not think this would be a good map for a PBEM game. It'd be better to create a normal map and then make sure everyone has a decent starting location.
First of all, thanks for all the feedback, everyone!
Now, to answer specific comments:
uberfish Wrote:Large parts of it look pretty much uninhabitable due to lack of food.
Point taken. More food resources have been added (essentially, another four or so per player) â see below for details.
uberfish Wrote:Starting off by pushing everyone towards researching the expensive Hunting tech because deer and fur are 2 out of the 3 resources, I don't like either.
Ah, but is researching Hunting the right choice? Itâs now an option to consider, but blindly researching Hunting early on is not a smart thing to do. It does make Hunting into a more of an economic tech, which is good.
DaveV Wrote:Potential problems: water mana seems almost obligatory if you want to settle in the middle of the map.
Yup. Also, Sun mana is needed for settling near the poles, if you want to scorch the ice, turning it into tundra. Thatâs why people have easy access to raw mana nodes. Should also facilitate trade â mana loans for Water mana would be quite common, I expect.
DaveV Wrote:I approve of having no lairs, although it does greatly lessen the number of barbs. I played ~55 turns and didn't see a single barb, just animals (except for a goblin and an archer in a fort). I think Wildland animals tend to choke out the barbs. Bad for the Orcs.
Yeah, good point. I think I will remove the Wildlands option.
DaveV Wrote:The toads and razorweed revealed in worldbuilder were a little jarring.
Thatâs intentional, actually â this world is supposed to be weird. However, this did not work out that well â these are Hell resources, so they turned back into silk\pigs after a single turn in-game. Good thing I caught it.
Tatan Wrote:First off, minor thing. In the west, there is an ivory in a jungle. IN THE
DESERT. This bugs me to no end, especially since there is no other jungle [or even ivory, I think?] on the map.
Yeah, but that elephant looks so cute, walking around those bushes! Seriously, though, this is mostly a little mind-game: keep the players on their toes.
Just donât ask me about the penguins.
Tatan Wrote:One, there don't appear to be any reagents on this map.
Thereâs actually four reagents on the map, in the equator area.
Tatan Wrote:Two, Unique Features also seem to be absent
Also intentional â these are rather unbalanced, I feel; thereâs also too much of a risk of someone spawning an early monster from a lair, which would be very difficult to defend against, and can screw a player through no fault of their own.
Tatan Wrote:So I would strongly suggest sprinkling more food resources liberally over the map [preferably non-Hunting ones], and perhaps it would be wise to add a few more commerce resources like incense and cotton as well.
Iâve added a cow and sheep in each playerâs area, another deer in the tundra area per player, and added another crab per player. Added a couple Oasisâes in each desert area as well (which turn into nice 4-1-2 tiles after Spring).
Iâve also doubled the incense locations, so these become quite powerful now, once Spring is cast, and these can be second-city sites.
With that in mind, I think thereâs now sufficient choice for putting down cities, and itâs not quite so food-starved anymore.
